Youth and Time

Once, I remember, the world was young; The rills rejoiced with a silver tongue; The field-lark sat in the wheat and sang; The thrush’s shout in the woodland rang; The cliffs and the perilous sands afar Were softened to mist by the morning star; For Youth was with me (I know it now!), And a light shone out from his wreathèd brow. He turned the fields to enchanted ground, He touched the rains with a dreamy sound.

But alas, he vanished, and Time appeared, The Spirit of Ages, old and weird. He crushed and scattered my beamy wings; He dragged me forth from the court of kings; He gave me doubt and a bloom of beard, This Spirit of Ages, old and weird. The wonder went from the field of corn, The glory died on the craggy horn; And suddenly all was strange and gray, And the rocks came out on the trodden way.

I hear no more the wild thrush sing: He is silent now on the peach aswing. Something is gone from the house of mirth— Something is gone from the hills of Earth. Time hurries me on with a wizard hand; He turns the Earth to a homeless land; He stays my life with a stingy breath, And darkens its depths with foreknowledge of death; Calls memories back on their path apace; Sends desperate thoughts to the soul’s dim place.

Time murders our youth with his sorrow and sin, And pushes us on to the windowless inn.